#71 FEELING BLUE, IN A GOOD WAY!

My finished painting named “Lily Pads and Lotus.”

My last few posts were related to drawing mazes. Although I found them intriguing, I did miss working with color.

My reference photo.

When a good friend on vacation in Georgia sent me a photo of lily pads – well, I thought the photo was a painting. It was so painterly, well composed and quite beautiful. This would be easy for me to work from, because there was little I needed to change.

Painting the lily pads felt impressionistic. The most important part of my painting was the “hero,” which was the lotus flower. My painting was perfect for a meditation track with its soothing colors.

Clicking on this image leads to my free meditation track on Insight Timer

My favorite parts of the finished painting were the areas of water puddles against the lily pads. They really had dimension!

My Lily Pad and Lotus was painted quickly. In contrast, my “Hummingbird & Hydrangea” was an exercise in patience. I spent more time on the preliminary planning than I had on my last painting.

It all began when an acquaintance asked me if I’d ever illustrated a hummingbird (I hadn’t). Subsequently, he offered to share an original photo with me. At first I wasn’t inspired; the photo was dark and the hummingbird colors muted. However, once I lightened it up it had incredible potential.

What a difference photo editing made!

My next step was to insert the hummingbird into a more beautiful background. I searched through many garden photos and was excited to be able to use them. They weren’t worthy of an illustration on their own, but in combination with a hummingbird – it would be perfect combination. I created dozens of digital layouts as an overview. I began to get discouraged, because nothing seemed to hit me. The hummingbird got lost in every composition. I couldn’t decide if it should rest upon a branch. I preferred having it hover, so I edited the bird’s tiny feet.

I ended up going with a white background. My next step was to isolate a flower for it.

Both the pink and blue hydrangeas mirrored colors in the hummingbird’s wings. But I was drawn to the purple/blue color, though my reference photo wasn’t exceptional. With Photoshop editing, it came to life. There was one area with a dark hole, and I replaced it with another flower blossom.

I had to really improve my photo for this painting.

The greenish gray tinged petals held interesting colors, but didn’t signify a healthy plant. I made sure to keep all the petals a combination of colorful cyan and purple. Here I was working with a lot of blues, right after painting the predominantly blue lily pads!

My painting in progress is masked with overlaying frisket film. The vivid hummingbird is covered, so it is muted.

Patience was needed with all the water droplets – there were literally hundreds of them. Instead of jewels, I was painting glitter with tiny dots.

I painted the hummingbird first and that was the easy part. Next, I masked the entire hydrangea flower and cut out each petal. Once I peeled back the frisket film to reveal an area to paint – I dotted liquid frisket with a toothpick for each droplet.

This painting did take considerable time, but once it was finished the feeling of satisfaction was indescribable! Once again, my image lent itself as an album cover for my music. Below is the cover for a recent instrumental album named “You Are My Wings Instrumentals.”

Clicking on this image is a link to my album.